Concur Request - Not what was promised

[tedecesare11]

I am extremely frustrated with Concur Request. It is not the product that was sold to us. We were told it integrates with Travel and Expense for a seamless end-to-end process. WRONG! From the beginning of implementation, we found it was more directly tied to Expense, Travel seems to have been an after-thought. We were advised the best practice is Approve then Book, this would prevent issues with ticketing deadlines. That is true. However, if you want to keep your travelers from booking prior to approval, creating a supremely frustrating loop, you will need to turn off Travel. If you turn off Travel, users cannot search flights or find pricing. The suggestion from Concur was to go outside of Travel (ie Google, Booking.com, etc.) Really?

In addition is if the booking is done offline (booked by TMC) the user has no visibility of their Trip Library. They cannot view their itinerary or make simple changes. That is a major problem now that TMCs are short staffed.

There are so many pain points for users, implementation of this tool has made me the single most reviled person in my company.

I am posting here as a warning to others. This product is not what is promised. I have mentioned this to our Concur teams for almost three years and nothing is being done to make improvements. It is not on the Roadmap, EVER! Shame on me for thinking they would care to improve the user experience for a product we are paying for. In my experience, the only way to get anything done is to make noise. So here I am!

Please feel free to contact me if you are considering adding this to your suite of products. If your travelers don't mind extra work and enjoy unintuitive software, then this is the tool for you.

If you are successfully using this product, bundled or integrated with Travel, please contact me and tell me what I am doing wrong.

However, I don't think anyone out there that can offer advice. Concur can't even find one of their customers that has done it (successfully.)

To be clear, there are some fine individuals that have been trying to help, but the roadblock is always "Concur doesn't support this."

So my message is to you "Concur"... work with your customers.

[KevinD]

@tedecesare11 hello there. I read your post. Sorry to hear your experience isn't a good one.

I am not a Travel Request expert, but I do know a little about it. So, my reply is based on what I know, but obviously I don't know how your Request module was configured/implemented.

What I have seen some of our customers do to ensure their employees get the pre-trip approval they need while not holding up the booking process is to configure Request so that when a user goes through the booking process, the system auto-creates a Travel Request based on the booking selections the user made. When they get to the end of the booking process, a Travel Request is auto-created and is populated with Air, Car and Hotel segments. The user reviews the request and then submits to their manager for approval. Once approved, the Trip will then send to the travel agency for confirmation and ticketing. This ensures the user gets their pre-trip approval done prior to their booking being sent to the travel agency. This obviously would not require you to turn off Concur Travel.

What is your current process in regards to the Travel Request? Do users create the request and submit, then do the booking once approved?

Does your company have a requirement that trips need approval from managers before being booked? Is that why you decided to go with Travel Request?

Lastly, could you clarify this statement for me, "In addition is if the booking is done offline (booked by TMC) the user has no visibility of their Trip Library." If you are using Concur Travel and a user calls the TMC to do a booking for some reason, that booking should show in the users Upcoming Trips. I'm not sure if your statement was in regards to if Concur Travel was turned off and they do the booking offline.

I'll await your reply.

[tedecesare11]

Hi Kevin,

Sorry to take so long to reply.    For the process you described, that is Book then Approve which we used for our US based employees.  Due to airline ticketing deadlines, we had to incorporate passive approval or the trips would be canceled, casusing even more frustration with our users.   The passive approval resulted in a great number of trips being auto-approved and the mangers never saw or approved the trips.   The Book then Approve method was actually discouraged by the Concur Request implementation team.  Due to a change in our travel policy, leadership wanted all trips to be approved prior to booking so the US was moved to the Approve then Book process.  To alleviate any issues with travelers booking first, we had to turn off access to Travel, again a recommendation of the Concur Request implementation team.   

As for the visibility of the Trip Library,  we were told when we made the change and turned off access to Travel, the Travel tab would not appear.  That lead me to believe the Trip Library would not be visible.   Once we went live, it was clear the Travel was available, but the Search function was disabled.   This allowed users to access the Travel Library.   It is a shame no one on the team knew that and had us worried about how users could access their trip information.

I am still seeking a resolution for offline bookings to be synced with Request.   Users should be able to access their trip itineraries from their Request to make simple changes/updates.

[KevinD]

@tedecesare11 interesting situation you are in. 

I don't know if things are different due to you have Request, but if your policy is Approve then book, you could still turn on the rule that all bookings (not Travel Requests) be approved before the booking can be completed. 

This isn't a passive approval as far as I remember, but the trip does need to be approved by the manager by the designated date and time. 

I do know we have other customers using Concur Travel and Request without the same issues you are having. Maybe post your issues in the Admin Group to see if someone in that group can offer some suggestions.

[scoathy]

I feel your pain @tedecesare11 as we had the same experience, verbatim to your first paragraph. we are approve to book by design and out of necessity. Because it normally takes 4-5 days to achieve full approval, book to travel simply isn't an option for us.

Outside of the request to travel woes you mention, the Request module integration checked all the other boxes within our requirements.

During Fusion last year in Orlando, I escalated this issue in person during a couple 1:1 conversations as well. I'll not go on about that but do feel this is indeed a big problem for Request users that Concur has no intention of resolving which is unfortunate. Likely there are too few Request users for it to move the needle is my suspicion. 

So, what did we do to help  our users? Not much we could do really but keep repeating this somewhat embarrassing message, "get your estimates in Travel, but don't try to book! then go into Request, add your estimates and submit. Once your Request is fully approved then go back into that Request and click the book travel button. that takes you to the travel module and don't leave Travel once your in because depending on where you leave, you may not be able to complete the booking from the "book travel mode" that is tied to the fully approved request. Oh and if that happens, just go ahead and call the travel agency directly, give them your Request ID and they will take care of the bookings for you via telephone or email."

Like I said, embarrassing... we've even had travelers arrive to the airport only to discover their ticket was never booked. Granted, the users have some responsibility here since our messaging is clear but there is much that could be done to mitigate these issues if Concur would make it a priority.

In the current state, I couldn't recommend the Request module to organizations that must follow the approve to book design since the process is too clunky

Happy to discuss this further with you too. perhaps we can help one another.

Cheers!

Scott

[tedecesare11]

Hi Scott.

Would love to share experiences with someone in the same storm.   Do you travelers make a lot of changes?   That is a particular pain point we are trying to manage.

[flowepr]

We are going to move away from Request and attempt to use Audit rules to get approvals.  We are on book to approve and due to the ticketing deadline, a lot of trips get canceled because the approvals weren't made in time.  Hoping to connect with someone who uses audit rules for approvals.